The Core includes three components: 1) Administration; 2) Animal Resource; and 3) Data Management. The Administrative component maintains a network of communication among the individual projects and between the projects and Core activities. This includes providing material/animals from the Animal Resource to the component projects and transfer of results from project experiments to a centralized Data Management System. Administrative responsibilities also include organizing and implementing regular meetings. Of the entire Program Project, along with its scientific advisory panel. The Animal Resource is a pathogen-free vivarium of aged Long-Evans male rats located at UNC-CH. Behavioral characterization of all aged rats used for neurobiological studies in the component projects will be conducted. Substantial background research presented in the proposal serves as a basis for examining spatial learning as an assessment of cognitive function which predicts aging in hippocampal/cortical circuitry. The final component of the Core, Data Management, provides services to the Program in its data collection and analysis activities. This includes: 1) consultation with participants regarding study design, routine and non-routine analyses, and power calculations; 2) design and maintenance of centralized archives for data generated on the project, including inventory of the animal population, data coding and analytic file construction; and 3) development of linked databases to allow across- project analyses. The overall goal of Core activities is to maximize the benefit that can be gained by collaborative research in a program project configuration.